A Wilderness of Words

Photo by Mary Pierce

Monday, January 4, 2010

Making Things Up

One of the things I love about children is that they make things up. There are monsters in their closets and under their beds but if they shut their eyes very, very tight it is a well-known fact that monsters can't see them. My son, when he was little, could make himself invisible to monsters. Not only that, but if he ran past me fast enough he was invisible to me as well, and I wouldn't see those extra cookies he had taken, or tell him that it was time to stop having all that fun with his friends because now we had to go home. My son was also a spy. He had powers of invisibility in that capacity, too, when he needed them.

I like to make things up myself. I like to make up characters who could be true, and put words in their mouths and thoughts in their heads that might be things that I would say or do, or that my son might, or even the man I saw once who looks very much like one of the characters in the book I am writing now.

I like to tell stories. My husband's grandmother, a wise woman, used to say, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." By which she meant, every fact is not necessary to the telling, in the end it's the story that matters. We are the stories we tell, every one of us. It makes us who we are, as well as entertains us, and that is where our truth dwells.

Over the years I have often wondered how your mind works. It is a great joy to find a window into that creativity open now for me to visit as often as possible. Thank you for leaping into the blog world, I shall be following the light in your window from mine. I remember with fascination the way you always could spin a story out of perfect strangers now matter where we were.

Hey Mary,I checked out your website when it first went up before all these posts were here. How wonderful! Your words are beautiful. Even in blog, you are a storyteller. I really enjoyed my visit here! I'll be visiting this wilderness often!